Looks Like the Apple Car's Been Ditched

Project Titan has become Project Titanic. Less than a month after rumours of a McLaren buyout, it looks like Apple’s dumped its secretive but supposedly grand car plans.

Hundreds of members of the company’s automotive team have either quit, been cut or reassigned to different projects, according to a Bloomberg report, with a source describing it as “An incredible failure of leadership.”

Apple’s car operations don’t appear to be dead yet, with the report saying that Project Titan’s “final direction” will be decided in late 2017. It’s likely, however, that the company will simply develop self-driving software for existing carmakers to use.

“New leadership of the initiative, known internally as Project Titan, has re-focused on developing an autonomous driving system that gives Apple flexibility to either partner with existing carmakers, or return to designing its own vehicle in the future, the people also said,” reads the report from Mark Gurman and Alex Webb.

“Remaining software engineers are working on autonomous programs, vision sensors, and simulators for testing the platform in real-world environments.”